Congress is responsible for passing annual appropriations to fund government agencies. If Congress neglects to pass funding bills, government agencies are forced to shut down. Follow all of Federal News Radio's government shutdown coverage from the past several years.

Federal courts are using money from filing fees and long-term appropriations to stay open during the shutdown, but that money is about to run out. Jim Silkenat, American Bar Association president, says Congress needs to pass a budget that addresses the costs of the shutdown and sequestration.

House Republicans unveiled a proposal that would give the Treasury authority to borrow normally through Feb. 7 and reopen the government with enough money to last until Jan. 15. The White House quickly rejected the plan.

Whatever you did yesterday, good, bad or indifferent, it doesn't matter. Thanks to the shutdown mode of government and various agency interpretations on it, Columbus Day was a nonevent for a lot of people, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says.

President Barack Obama is being updated by members of the White House about the impact of the government shutdown on key federal agencies and programs. Over the weekend, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough briefed Obama on the shutdown's impact on the government's research efforts, according to the White House.

Preliminary figures suggest next year's benefit increase will be roughly 1.5 percent, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. The increase will be small because consumer prices, as measured by the government, haven't gone up much in the past year.

Federal employees who are "excepted" from furloughs have remained on the job despite the government shutdown, which is now stretching into its third week. OPM updated its shutdown guidance Friday to include instructions on how to handle "brief or intermittent unpaid absences" by excepted federal employees. Overall, OPM has made more than a dozen changes to its shutdown guidance since congressional appropriations for fiscal 2014 lapsed two weeks ago.

When a Washington based web solution firm received an email from a furloughed fed looking for temporary work, the firm immediately jumped on the idea to create a website with job postings for freelance work. From idea to execution, unfurlough.us was launched in just five hours.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke by phone Sunday but failed to agree on a deal to raise the nation's borrowing authority above the $16.7 trillion debt limit or reopen a government still shuttered on its 14th day.

A new staff report from the Senate Commerce Committee highlights some of the ways in which the government shutdown is throwing sand in the gears of the private economy. But the authors also point to several ways in which federal furloughs are jeopardizing public safety.

Millions of federal retirees will have to wait to find out the size of next year's cost-of-living adjustment. The Labor Department says it won't report inflation statistics on time this month, which will delay the Social Security Administration's COLA calculation.

For every day that the government shutdown drags on, federal managers face a potentially growing morale crisis in the federal-employee ranks. For federal managers, returning from the shutdown, however, will offer them the opportunity to refocus on the "federal brand," the set of ideals and sense of mission that the federal government is uniquely suited to offer.